Hal Colebatch - Man-Kzin Wars – XIII

“Sabotage!” yowled rr-Pilot as the sensor plot was suddenly choked with a spreading cone of small, dense signatures spraying out from each of the four ruptured tubes. However, at second glance, it was evident that this growing debris cloud was not really a cone: it was a funnel. And the only way to escape the junk rushing at them was-

hn-Pilot pointed urgently. “Get into the open space-there, at the center of the funnel.”

rr-Pilot growled, complied-and with one sharp jerk, they were in the eye of the scree-storm, unscathed. Incisor-Yellow was not so lucky: judging from the com-chatter and the hull’s now-wavering course, its portside gravitic polarizer drive had been damaged and the crew-section breached. The craft was losing atmosphere, and a piece of junk the size of a small ball-bearing had punctured the bridge, killing the co-pilot where he sat.

“What treachery is this?” rr-Pilot’s growl was low, with a hard, fast vibratory underbuzz: the sound of a barely suppressed kill instinct.

hn-Pilot was still trying to make sense of the ambush. Clearly, the humans had preprogrammed this event into Lasso ’s automatic routines. But why here, so far inside the Proxima system? And why an explosion of junk, jetting out of the four containers that had obviously been sealed with illegal explosive bolts? To destroy the kzin escorts, yes, perhaps, but then why not ensure that the spread pattern would create a full cone of debris, rather than this empty-cored funnel? Simply moving to the hull’s lengthwise center-line had allowed the two kzin craft to escape the worst effects of the-

“hn-Pilot, there is more activity.”

He looked up at rr-Pilot’s tone: puzzlement edged with dread. The dense, encircling halo of debris was beginning to fall forward around them, but less quickly, according to the scanners. That meant that the Lasso had stopped counterboosting, and they were matching speed to maintain distance-but why was the human craft not continuing to decelerate?

The answer was in rr-Pilot’s next report: “ Lasso is tumbling, commander.”

A tumble meant that the human ship’s engines were no longer slowing her, so the debris would stay with all the craft slightly longer, now, continuing to hem them in. Indeed, the human ship’s spin about its considerable longitudinal axis would ultimately bring it end-over-end, so that the fusion drive would be in a position to exert forward thrust.

Or, in other words, the drive’s exhaust plume would rotate straight back into the faces of the two debris-encircled kzin smallships.

hn-Pilot saw it before the others. “One-eighty tumble and counterboost-max gees! Now! Do it now!”

But as the last word left his wet, spittle-spraying mouth, the blinding blow-torch tail of the Lasso ’s fusion drive completed its one-hundred-eighty degree spin: hn-Pilot watched a literally blinding sun rise swiftly into his viewscreen-

— a split second before he and every other object in the two-ship kzin escort were stripped down into subatomic particles by the shaft of blue-white radiance that shot almost fifty kilometers behind the Euclid’s Lasso .

By the time the inner hatch of the secret asteroid base finally opened, Dieter Armbrust presumed he would find himself staring down the muzzles of at least half a dozen recoilless assault rifles. What he found instead was a single, slim woman of indeterminate age and Far East Asian descent. “Welcome,” she said. “I am Miriam Yang.”

The thirty-year-old lieutenant from Neue Ingolstadt nodded. “Yes, ma’am. You were one of the two specialists I was told might have sent the request that was the catalyst for this mission.”

“Which you have carried out quite well, Herrenman Armbrust.”

Dieter was partly flattered, partly insulted. “I am not a Wunderlander aristocrat, Dr. Yang. I do have my degree from the Uni in Munchen, and I was educated in a private school. But I am not the child of a wealthy family.”

“No? Then I suppose you must be quite talented, to have received state assistance to attend a private school.”

“Actually, I was not the truly gifted one. That was my older brother, Wulf. He received a full scholarship to go to the private school from the time he was a bub . Which meant my parents were able to save enough to send me, also.”

Dr. Yang’s gaze was unblinking, assessing. “Since you were not born into the herrenman aristocracy, I doubt your parents could afford more than half the tuition.”

“Exactly half,” confirmed Dieter.

“So, the Colonial Branch of the Amalgamated Regional Militia has sent me a half-genius.” Yang’s momentarily impish expression became severe once again. “Would you like some tea?”

Dieter nodded and followed her gesture into an adjoining room.

Dieter had expected that Dr. Yang’s offer of tea had simply been an invitation to nothing more than a shared cup. But he had been mistaken. As he now redid his collar button, still stunned at the events of the preceding half-hour and the stamina of the much-older Miriam Yang, he cleared his throat.

She looked over at him: her face was composed, serene, maybe a bit defiant. “It has been a long time, for me.” Her tone was matter-of-fact. “And it may be much longer from here on.”

Dieter cleared his throat again. “Dr. Yang, about that tea-”

She seemed to laugh; it was a muted sound. “Of course. The tea has been steeping; I hope you like it strong.”

Right now, thought Dieter, the stronger the better. “Yes, Doctor.”

She proffered a delicate china teacup. “So. You have brought the supplies I requested?”

“Yes. And we deposited the disguised reentry vehicle at the specified coordinates in the Serpent Swarm.”

“It is encased in rock, to look like the other asteroids?”

“Yes.” Curiosity got the better of Dieter: “Is it a delivery vehicle? For dropping a warhead?”

“In a manner of speaking. More tea?”

Dieter had not realized that he had already drained his cup. “Yes, please.”

Yang spoke as she poured. “That was quite a clever trick you pulled on the kzinti escorting you. Was it your idea?”

“Partly.”

Yang obviously knew false modesty when she heard it. “Not just a half-genius, are you, Lieutenant?”

“I was never sufficiently bookish, Doctor.”

“Ah. A man of action.” She smiled at him, glanced so briefly at his muscular thighs that he almost missed it. “How was it that the kzin did not find you and your team’s habitation module within Lasso ’s main cargo hull?”

“We were already underway by the time the escorts caught up with us. When the kzin took over facilities that handle the Lasso , the documentation there indicated that her cargo was routine.”

“And they believed that?”

Dieter shrugged. “Evidently. After all, they had little reason to fear a single automated transport. Just how much military gear could it carry? And what would it achieve out here?”

“So, the kzin approach problems head-on. And foresee threats in the same way.”

“Hmm. I suspect it’s their first inclination, but I also saw evidence that some of them can learn to be a bit more, well, devious. Particularly if they are forced to contend with human sneakiness on a daily basis.”

“Not surprising. Indeed, I was worried that they might simply eliminate Euclid’s Lasso outright.”

“I did not share your worry, Doctor. Judging from events in Serpent’s Swarm, the kzin mostly observe a hands-off policy when it comes to local economies, even before a formal surrender. They have a keen understanding that damage to infrastructure means a reduction of tribute. And since Lasso ’s payload was already outbound by the time they caught up with her, they probably concluded that we had not had enough time to put a military cargo in her. They presumed it was business as usual.”